When I was working only at the bakery, a regular customer learned that I sewed and asked if I could repair a quilt for him. And he'd pay me for it. "Sure thing!" I said. I was still beginning to learn how to quilt when I agreed and adopted his torn up quilt, but I was confident that I could figure it out. When I brought it home and laid it out, I was overwhelmed.
A quilt is made of three parts: a pieced front, a batting, and fabric for the backing. In his quilt, there were chunks where all three layers were missing! How was I going to fix it?
I folded it and stored it in the closet until...
July 2014
I sent out a plea to two friends to review this quilt and help me make a game plan. Molly said, "Sounds like an SOS. I can swing by today to look at it." Her assessment was that I should rip out all the quilting and "start over" with a new quilt front and scrap the backing and batting.
So I set to it. For a few weeks I would sit on the futon at my friends house during our crafting social nights with this quilt and my seam ripper. Luckily the hand-quilted stitches were easier to remove than had it been machine-sewn.
Then slowly, as I had patience for it, I would patch small holes with a similar looking fabric. And for the much larger gaping holes, I made my own mock log cabin blocks to insert onto his.
March 2015
I finally finished this gd quilt! I felt really proud. And then sometimes I would look at it up close and think, "God, this is shit in comparison to his original, original quilt." And then I'd remember, "But oh yeah... his dog tore through it and made the whole quilt impossible to use and now this is a fully functional quilt!" Mission accomplished. : )
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| Held up to the window to check for the smaller holes. The bottom center part is one of the log cabin blocks that I sewed on already. |
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| Getting ready to tie knots to keep this baby together |
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| Details of tying knots |
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| Cramped. Machine sewing on the binding |
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| (poor photo quality) The finished quilt! |
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